Comments on el solipsisto manifesto

Posted 08/10/06 - 2:53 AM:
Subject: el solipsisto manifesto
I’m not sure how one goes about asking complete strangers to noodle through 60+ pages of one’s own thoughts… ideas here better resembling alphabet soup gone insane than an organized progression of thinkery… sentences completely unsolicited… though I am, I must say, increasingly confident that this most likely isn’t…

Now, to be perfectly honest: I’d like very much for this to become a thread… only… there’s a hitch…It’s not that I think that Ann Landers/Dear Abbey-size hunks of philosophy are incapable of communicating meaningful musings - even though in my experience around these kinds of places they as often as not don't - it’s just that my original post’s way too long… (and it’s also got a background I’ve kind of grown partial to… and, in the Word version, endnote links which are really quite convenient… just hold the cursor over the green flower thingy and the endnote pops up… =)

So, while this is a link to a paper I’ve written, it’s more importantly the beginning of a thread of discussion… just somewhat unconventional…

Thus, if you’ve the audacity to actually give this train wreck of a swan song – actually it’s more of a croak - a shot, then this is what you’re getting yourself into:This half of a manifesto is the last breath of my faith in philosophy… brought on – or rather carried off – by the discovery/admission/belief that philosophy is in fact nothing more than language… indoctrination one-year-olds gets kisses and other kinds of attention for… and that’s it… and disagree if you’d like… tell me how you or your artist friend think without words… only, for your own self esteem, please don’t notice that you’re telling me all about how you/she/he do what you do wordlessly…

You’re also going to hear a denial of there being any philosophical progress to speak of to date… in that the replacements haven’t exactly done just that… as in, if you’ve yet to make it off of the drawing board, it takes faith – or rather ignorance and presuppositions – to believe yourself to be anywhere else…

Essential to this paper is Alan Watts’ idea of a ‘think,’ a ‘unit of thought’… which is to say something… something that’s certainly this and not that… leading me back to the notion that human minds work within a system of dichotomy… giving metaphysics not so much the boot as it does 2 of them… sorry… however, whether you were aware of it or not, Plato indeed lost his forms in his own lifetime... and he knew it… and no one’s propped them back up since then…

Lastly, this paper is written with its nose as well as well as its middle finger way up at the idea that philosophy – or rather whatever/Whatever philosophy’s chasing – is only to be found within page limits… within convention… and chained to the MLA citation format…

That said, if you don’t want to suffer through the whole thing, we can get this started simply with your refutation/agreement that there has, in fact, been no real progress in philosophy…

Thanks in advance for any and all of your time… it’s sincerely appreciated much more than much…=)ryan

Philosophy is in fact a language... I'll tell you what. I'll trade you. You read my words with enough of an open mind to do them respect in your own mind. And I'll do the same for yours. But no bargains, if you got 60 pages for me to read then you need to read 60 of mine.

Before you start let me tell you that I have never cracked a philosophy book. Philosophy is a conglomeration of many languages my friend that you have become frustrated with trying to understand as one and understandably so. But you take the low road in blaming in soul, the exterior, leaving your true answers unnoticed by you on the inside. Logic is just another language form dude it wont lead you to anything but itself. One the one hand you have yourself facilitating through a limited set of languages and trying to understand them as one, and or God help you, prove the limitless or in your case any progression within them. If that is the case have fun with that. On they other hand, in order find or prove what you seek you need the need to compile enough information on the nature of all languages available to you in the form of the philosophical together and use what work best for you to create, now get this Ryan, your own language. A language capable of answering your questions and leaving behind the questions that are not really yours that you have been packing around trying to save the universe with. If you are smart, and I think you are, you will realize that your language is a living thing that needs to be constantly feed and nurtured so that it can be all that it needs to be to facilitate you being all that you can be, and thus answer all the questions you could ever ask the universe. You are correct people are lazy. So if you want to communicate effectively with them you need to get with that program and loose all the extra poetic vibration that is designed by your needs to be right in the eyes of others in these matters that you wish to convey.

You have come to the right place, you will find people here willing to talk with you about your ideas. But we have our own minds here and they are practiced minds, I hope that is what you are looking for.

Look ryan don't be so surprised when people are reluctent to read your stuff.

It is because of your approching them with the "secret truth" stance that you take.

We just spent 10 billion years developing thousands of languages in the hopes that each change we made would bring us closer to decribing the truth of things real. All along the way we have had people cropping up professing to have the answers. People naturaly paint anyone doing that as a fanatic whether they are or not. Take me for instance. I am a psychic, I can decribe all of the energies that stand in your way of your finding your truth through the esoteric language I have developed comunicating with the universe! Why wont you just let me show you! Come on! use my method to find your answers!

Sound appealing? yeah not even to a reasonable psychic. But I can combine my unique language with that of the availible languages of our greater societies to find my reletive truth in the universe, becuase that is how it was meant to be done I guesse, through social interaction. if it wern't only one of us would have been created in the first place.

If a worthy language to describe the truth cannot be comunicated, then it is not finished in being created and needs more work before it will be used effectivly.

Another common mistake profits make is in believing and professing that we as humans are or should be in some great hurry to solve the real questions. We really just want to have fun along the way.

Ryan wrote:This half of a manifesto is the last breath of my faith in philosophy… brought on – or rather carried off – by the discovery/admission/belief that philosophy is in fact nothing more than language

to say that philosophy is nothing more than language is, in my opinion, a lot like saying money is nothing more than paper. in one sense, sure, yes, it's true. in another sense, and perhaps in its most important sense, philosophy is about what those words represent; it is about the personal meaning involved and the dynamic of the exchange which is important.

Ryan wrote:That said, if you don’t want to suffer through the whole thing, we can get this started simply with your refutation/agreement that there has, in fact, been no real progress in philosophy…

it all depends, of course, on what you mean by "progress". as watts once pointed out, there are 2 types of travel. one is travel with a destination in mind and the other is travel just for the fun of it. so to debate whether philosophy is making progress depends of course on what you have in mind by way of a destination. in some contexts, philosophy is a form of play, and of exploration. enjoying the journey; that's progress as far as i'm concerned.

another function that philosophy serves is to facilitate healing of the wounded soul by virtue of expression. if philosophy has no meaning for you, then why philosophize? clearly your own philosophizing is a symbol of your progress in some way, or else you would not be out and about, seeking to share your words. just because one doesn't know where he's going doesn't mean he's not getting anywhere.

incidentally, after i removed the background and changed the font to times new roman, size 12, your text comes out to 46 pages. (no offense intended toward your lovely design. i only did that so i can use the microsoft word highlighter pen while i'm reading the text.) it'll take some time for me to work my way through all of it but i will get back to you with some feedback as my schedule permits. i can tell you from my preliminary perusal that i enjoyed a number of the quotes you picked out to punctuate your text. quiddity, what a great word.

hey you!ok, re. the $ bit -> what I'm saying is that both the paper and whatever meaning you attach to it are, at first words, but more fundamentally thinks... at least 2 of them... whatever you choose them to be... and that that's going to be fork in the gears of absolutes... which many phiosophers have claimed to have shackled to sentences...

re. the tavelling bit and the rest of the post -> bang on... agree wholeheartedly... and really got something out of remembering that!thanks!

oh, and I think the tail-end of my paper kind of doves into me agreeing with you 2... only after plumbing the scary alternative...And by philosophy I mean ivory tower when I'm cranky, and meaningful conversation when I'm off my meds... ryan!

Sure! Only, wanna take turns or go simultaneously? I'm worried that we'll be talking past each other if we go the latter...

After a time away and then coming back to read all of this I have to tell you that I feel a bit overwelmed by the challenge. I am still willing to participate, don't get me wrong. I have been away at work for a few days. I get called away from time to time and when that happens I only have time for surviving it. then when I come back to my life I have to play catch up there too. Instead of my offering a one on one type thing lets just keep this conversation the way it was to intended to unfold in this forum. With the participation of everyone interested and not a promise of partipation on my part, but an affirmation of interest in your document and my enthusiasm for talking with you lib and who ever else desides to participate in the thread about it. I don't want to get lost talking past each other either, I like the conversation to lope along at reasonable speeds with mutual respects of each others words and affections being comunicated clearly. With all that out of the way, I would like to affirm what lib said about your defining the word progress in terms of the historical affects philosophies have had on humans, of the abilites that philosophies can have in effecting anything of us.

what is this progress you are sure has not happened? can you spell that out here for me?

Ok… I read Lib's post again, and am still impressed with her Alan Watts touché!

That said, I'm pretty sure (or at least I'd like to think) that I mean both... the destination one first, and the fun of travel one second... in that, my paper (or rather the intellectual journey of my last 2 years) begins with the idea that while science piles bricks on top of bricks, philosophy appears (to me) to be more a process of philosophical giants throwing away the first unsatisfactory brick, logically flawed and inferior to the latest flavor of the month… again and again…À la Aristotle didn't really agree with Plato and then build on him... the Christian church to Aristotle… Rationalism to Empiricism… Kant to Hume… Marx to Hegel… Nietzsche to everyone =)... etc...

Now I'm not saying that there's no agreement among philosophers... what I am saying, is that you can't really kind of agree with the mind body distinction that Descartes dropped onto the scene and then proceed to tinker with the details...You have to run with it or reject it... and this is - I think - because philosophy doesn't deal with the more directly touchable words of the universe (pencils and neutrons and stuff), but rather with words... or more accurately Alan's 'thinks'... and the grammar/logic which governs them… which is to say how the human mind communicates what it ‘thinks’…

I’ve caught a lot of ‘What do you have against words!?’ posts around town… which the first part of my paper most definitely does imply… bringing me to the second half… the manifesto turning tail part… which came about as a result of my discovery that solitary philosophy done with sincerity (trying my best to question the presuppositions I might be working off of unknowingly) is scary in spades, and that philosophy done with a group can be meaningful, but will never ever happen upon what philosophy appears to be chasing… if you can agree with its giants… e.g. any capitalized idea and/or any idea free from debate, i.e. the last word…

So, back down Plato’s Cave goes I… perhaps also inspired by my situation… newly single… homesick… still in Taiwan after 6 years… missing the most important people in my life… loving the words between us… not exactly the philosopher I was when I left…

Now this just feels incomplete and choppy… and I’ve refrained from inserting any more brackets noting my fixation on presuppositions… but I’m assuming that you guys have a general idea of what I’m talking about, and if not, then I’ll try harder to write with greater clarity next time.

So, hopefully this is enough to keep the ball rolling… hope you’re all doing well…ryan

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